The present paper tries to identify the societal factors and psychological factors that motivate students to have better performance in English as a second language and to postulate a theoretical model subsuming these socio-psychological variables to explain and predict the performance in English as a second language for Hong Kong students in Australia. Since the proposal of socio-educational model of second language learning by Gardner (1959), a number of studies have focused on identifying the potent factors in second language acquisition. Giles and Byrne (1982) emphasized the need to have variables intended to determine the perceived relationships operating between ethnic groups. Kraemer (1993) included ethnolinguistic vitality perception construct in her study on social psychological factors in the learning of Arabic in Israeli schools. 247 students of ethnic Chinese in the Sydney metropolitan area who were studying in weekend Chinese schools and 628 Hong Kong students who were studying in primary and secondary schools were sampled. Path analysis was used to determine the relationship between the performance of Chinese and English with societal and psychological variables.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

The present paper tries to identify the social and psychological factors that motivate students to have better performance in English as a second language, and to postulate a theoretical model subsuming these socio-psychological variables to explain and predict the performance in English as a second language for Hong Kong students in Australia. Gardner (1959) hypothesized that students would have higher performance in the second language performance if they exhibit the desire to learn the second language in order to integrate themselves with the target culture than when they exhibit the desire to learn the language for pragmatic reasons. The perceived status of language affects the use of and attitude toward a language. Giles, Bourhis and Taylor (1977) defined Ethnolinguistic vitality as structural characteristics such as socio-economic status, demographic representation and institutional support pertinent to a language. Smolicz, Hudson and Secombe (1998) described multicultural policies of Australia as a solution to the dilemma of reconciling the immigrants' love of their homeland and its culture and their desire to adapt to the overarching Australian framework. 247 students of ethnic Chinese in Sydney metropolitan area who were studying in weekend Chinese schools (age 8 to 16 with mean age of 10.1) and 628 Hong Kong students who were studying in primary and secondary schools (age 8 to 16 with mean age 10.5) were sampled. Path analysis was used to determine the relationship between the performance of Chinese and English with ethnolinguistic vitality, motivation, attitudes and use and class anxiety in the learning of English.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]

Graduates need to be able to acquire transferable skills so as to enable them gain employment in the treacherous and unpredictable environment of today's world. As educators in the higher education sector, how are we going to engage all students in the deep learning process so that they could resolve problems themselves? This paper delimits the exploration and evaluation of problem-based learning (PBL) and its effects on student learning. In this study, the original pure PBL model is modified and developed into a form that is suitable to both deep and surface students in a Higher Diploma engineering course of Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Tsing Yi). This PBL model started with a problem at the beginning of the term given to a group of students. Then, a variety of teaching and learning modes which included lectures, tutorials, group discussion, and presentation were used to facilitate students to solve the problem. Promising results gathered from summative test and student interview show that this modified PBL model is suitable to students of both learning approaches. This PBL model is worthwhile for further investigation to improve the quality of student learning and problem solving skill to survive in this fast changing society.
[Copyright of Australian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education (ascilite) at http://www.ascilite.org.au]

Civic education has been idealized and assigned the mission of preparing critical thinking, responsible, participating, multidimensional citizens. But on the other hand, civic education is also charged with the responsibility of moralizing the citizens into characters like punctuality, obedience, docility, deference . It is also used to serve the function of nationalistic education: Instilling the sense of national identity , loyalty to the nation state and patriotism.
Many Asian countries have strong elements of nationalistic education in their civic education . In 1996, one year before the return of sovereignty of Hong Kong to Chinas, a new official Guidelines on Civic Education in Schools (1996), proposing a curriculum framework with equal emphasis on human rights education, education for democracy, education for rule of law, nationalistic education, global education and education for critical thinking was introduced by the Education Department, which is to be implemented in schools starting from September of 1996. After 1 July, 1997, there was a very strong pressure from the society, asking for more nationalistic education and more schools were taking the initiative to implement nationalistic education.
Does the the mission of civic education : preparing critical thinking, responsible, participating, multidimensional citizens, contradict with that of nationalistic education : instilling the sense of national identity , loyalty to the nation state and patriotism ? This paper attempts to construct a framework to study (1) whether there are contradiction and (2)whether the practice of nationalistic education in schools is different from that of civic education.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]